Comparative Religions : Native Americans And The Africans

Comparative Religions : Native Americans And The Africans

2269 WordsSep 27th, 201410 Pages

Craft
Week 2
Comparative Religions W01
Dr. Tim Davis

Question 1: While the Native Americans and the Africans inhabited two different continents, their belief system has a plethora of similarities pertaining to their core values. The basis of their religion also, in some ways, epitomizes modern day religion such as rites of passage. Their differences are shallow in context when it comes to what they view as sacred and holy and including religious rituals that are performed for a specific reason or transformation. Both Native American and African mythologies center around the ideology of harmony, balance, and cyclical nature of all beings through animistic symbolization. To a certain degree, all outsiders or nonnatives who study the belief systems of indigenous religions have found that indigenous religion is more than just a religion or belief system but rather an inherent way of living. To name or label indigenous beliefs as “religion” or any other is to have a bias based on our own views of transformation and ultimacy. Animism is common among African and Native American religions. It is the belief that all of earth is alive even in the form of spirits or animals. This idea embraces harmony among all living things and that humans are essentially no better than say a fish. If the harmony becomes out of balance, sacrifice or ritual is often performed in order to restore the balance that has been lost. The Native Americans believe that the highest spirit lives in…

educational policies in the United States that have resulted in intentional patterns of oppression by Protestant, European Americans against racial and ethnic groups. The historical context of the European American oppressor is helpful in understanding how the dominant group has manipulated the minority groups. These minority groups include Americans who are Native, African, Latin/Hispanic, and Asian. Techniques for deculturalization were applied in attempts to erase the oppressed groups’ previous…

habitats in North America, different native religions evolved to match the needs and lifestyles of the individual tribe. Religious traditions of aboriginal peoples around the world tend to be heavily influenced by their methods of acquiring food, whether by hunting wild animals or by agriculture. Native American spirituality is no exception. Traditional Lakota spirituality is a form of religious belief that each thing, plant and animal has a spirit. The Native American spirituality has an inseparable…

understanding created tensions, between Native Americans and Europeans, and later between Native Americans and Euro-Americans, that eventually erupted into open warfare and resulted in great bloodshed between cultures. For the Lakota peoples of North America, cultural misunderstanding culminated with Euro-American misinterpretation of the purpose of the Native American Ghost Dance with its related religious beliefs and the massacre of peaceful Native American Lakota people as they were attempting to…

African and Native American Slavery
The 1500's, a time of discovery, was when the Europeans came to dominate
most of the New World. The Europeans traveled to Africa and captured Africans
to help develop their land and satisfy their need for power. I feel that the
treatment of the Indians and Africans by the Europeans was completely
unjustifiable. While the Indians and Africans were less technologically
advanced and the Europeans were uneducated, in this particular field, nothing
can compensate…

Over the century Native American religions have been repressed and misunderstood. There has been little room for them to actually be able to explain their rituals and why it is important to them as a society. This ignorance’s has resulted in the loss of land, false practices with sacred objects, and a lack of education within the rituals of indigenous religions. The indigenous population deserves support to preserve their practices and language. Since most of these religions have been repressed for…

behavior, and religion. Although the other topics hold their own level of importance, religion is quite important to consider since it impacted the majority of Indian actions and customs.
In early America, most Europeans were Christians of different denominations. To the colonists, the differences in their religion were hardly as important as the differences between native American religion and the religion of settlers. This fact coupled with the fact that Europeans wanted native lands made them…

African and Native American Slavery
Scot Ferguson
11-12-96
period 2
The 1500's, a time of discovery, was when the Europeans came to dominate
most of the New World. The Europeans traveled to Africa and captured Africans
to help develop their land and satisfy their need for power. I feel that the
treatment of the Indians and Africans by the Europeans was completely
unjustifiable. While the Indians and Africans were less technologically
advanced and the Europeans were uneducated, in this…

Europeans arrived to the Americans for the freedom both religious and from overpowering monarchies of their native lands back in Europe. In the European cities there were also overpopulation which destroyed the cities and towns with diseases. In the Americas the Native Americans were the first to inhabit the land; the Native Americans were peaceful people who relied on the land and its resources to survive. As the European settlers arrived and started to colonize the Native Americans tried to live amongst…

As the Native American population had been decimated by genocide and war, England looked to African slaves to provide them with the necessary labor to harvest tobacco. Although African slaves had the same status as that of an indentured servant, African slaves began to become more and more restricted, losing all human and civil rights. These restrictions were placed on African slaves to protect the rights of the indentured Englishmen, and developed a social/political system based of segregation and…

American History: Native American Religion
The North American community in today’s worlds has embraced Christianity, Muslim and other popular religious beliefs. Finding the ancient religious practices in action is rare, but not impossible. The communities had their own believes concerning gods and philosophies of good and evil before they were colonized. The communities have lost most of their beliefs and practices as they took place in the earlier community to popular religions which were introduced…